The Problem with Megan's Law

Megan's Law was supposed to protect us from neighborhood predators. But in too many places, kids are still in danger.

The sounds of children and splashing water caught Francine Johnson's attention on a weekday afternoon last May. Wondering if school had let out early, she looked out her window at her neighbor's above-ground pool and saw a half dozen young boys, each around eight years old, playing in the water. With them was Robert Forzano, the strapping blond automobile mechanic who lived next door to Johnson in suburban Rancho Cordova, California. She was puzzled, thinking it odd that Forzano, 42, who didn't socialize with other adults in their neighborhood, would be playing with children in the middle of a school day. "Whenever I saw him, he was standoffish with me. Kind of gruff, really," says Johnson. "So this was strange."

Johnson mentioned the pool party to her husband that night; and she kept up her vigil, watching boys come and go on several other afternoons. Both her backyard and Forzano's opened onto the busy White Rock Community Park, and the local elementary school was just across the street. In fact, the school's principal, Fay Kerekes, could nearly see Forzano's house from where she stood as kids poured into her school each morning. But there was one shocking fact that neither of these women knew: Forzano and his roommate, tow truck operator Brian McDaniel, 42, were both convicted child molesters.

Forzano had served four years in prison for molesting boys under age ten in Ventura County, California; after his parole, he moved in with McDaniel, who had a similar record of lewd acts with a child under age 14 (the men are thought to have met in prison). The two melted into this community outside Sacramento just as easily as they might have a decade earlier, before the passage of Megan's Law.

That landmark piece of legislation was named after seven-year-old Megan Kanka, murdered in 1994 by a convicted sex offender who lived across the street from the Kankas' New Jersey home. After Megan's death, her grief-stricken mother, Maureen, campaigned tirelessly for a law that would prevent other parents from having to endure a similar tragedy. In May 1996, President Clinton signed a law requiring all states to make information about pedophiles and rapists available to the public. But Congress gave the states a lot of leeway in how they accomplished this goal. "Putting a law in place is one thing," Maureen Kanka says today. "Having law enforcement and the state work together to see that the registries are as up-to-date as possible and that they're being used effectively is another."

Had Forzano lived in Texas, Florida, or another state that is aggressive about implementing Megan's Law, the police might have been sent to the White Rock Elementary School to warn the principal that a convicted pedophile had moved in little more than a block away. Or flyers with his photo might have been handed out to neighbors by law-enforcement officials. But at the time, California's version of Megan's Law was among the most permissive in the country. Plus, California was doing a poor job of enforcing the requirements they did have: In 2003, 30 to 40 percent of the state's 100,000 convicted sex offenders were missing from the registry.

Forzano, at least, kept his appointments with the sheriff's office, spoke politely to detectives, and provided a correct address. But with the California state registry not yet online, his neighbors could have learned about Forzano's criminal history only by going to the police station, signing an application, and looking him up on a CD-ROM. Or, for $10, they could have called a 900 number to get information. Not surprisingly, says Laura Ahearn, executive director of the New York--based advocacy group Parents for Megan's Law, no neighbors made the call. "When Megan's Law was passed, there was so much hope that these laws would be strong," she says. "But some states have deluded the public into thinking they are being protected when they aren't."

Forzano and McDaniel kept their lawn trim and their driveway full of cars. Many mornings, Forzano would stand outside working under the hood of his old Mustang, greeting children who passed by on their way to school. Forzano's appearance caused no alarm--his tanned face and thick neck looked youthful and macho. To the eight-year-olds in the neighborhood, he was simply "Bob," or "my friend Bob." Forzano's young "friends"--almost a dozen boys between seven and 12 years old, mostly from low-income families newly arrived from Ukraine, according to the police--kept quiet as Forzano "groomed" them, as the long seduction of young victims is called. The friendly greetings over the hood of Forzano's Mustang turned into conversations in the park. Once Forzano was no longer a stranger, or someone to be feared, the boys came through the chain-link fence in his backyard and into the pool, police say, and then up the steps into his house. Forzano plied them with sodas and snacks and movies that weren't available at home and gave the older boys a refuge from school. "The parents didn't realize that their kids were skipping school," says Sgt. Micki Links, who is in charge of the sex offender registry for the Sacramento County Sheriff's Office. "The kids didn't want anyone to know, to stop a good thing. And when they said, 'We were at Bob's house,' the parents thought it was a little friend, not an adult."

Forzano kept his pool parties going for several weeks, police say, until Deputy Steve Wright, a resource officer with the Folsom-Rancho Cordova Unified School District, looked into curious absences by two boys from the nearby Mills Middle School. The boys wouldn't say where they had been, so the school asked for Wright to be put on the case. He got the boys to admit they'd been hanging out with an adult named Bob. Wright drove them past the house for confirmation, ran a check on the license plate of a car in the driveway, and learned of Forzano's status as a registered sex offender. Wright listened with concern as the boys talked about playing in Forzano's pool and in his house, sometimes with their seven- and eight-year-old brothers, students at White Rock Elementary School. One of those younger brothers, police learned, appeared to be Forzano's intended victim. Forzano showed the boy some child pornography, which is often the first step toward coercing sexual acts.

At dawn on May 25, 2004, Principal Kerekes was awakened by a call from the sheriff's office. Now that someone was obviously in danger, California state law allowed police to warn the school about a sex offender. Principal Kerekes signed for the Megan's Law disclosure and received a rap sheet on Forzano. At the same time, the police, with a warrant, entered the men's neat, wood-shingled house and found a stash of child pornography on McDaniel's computer, a hidden video camera set up to capture children undressing and urinating, and a wealth of toys and games. "It was pretty scary," says Sergeant Links, "to see that these two grown men had more Walt Disney videos than most parents."

The next day, the police announced the arrest of Forzano on two felony charges of molesting or annoying a child under 14 (for improper touching in the pool) and on a misdemeanor--using a camcorder to film someone unknowingly for sexual gratification. They also arrested McDaniel for possessing child pornography.

By summer's end, only a brown spot on the ground hinted at the place where Forzano's pool had once stood. McDaniel tore it down after he bailed himself out of jail, while his housemate remained in custody awaiting prosecution. Later, McDaniel was convicted and sentenced to a 180-day work furlough program and three years' probation. In September, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill giving Californians Internet access to more of the state's sex offender registry. Meanwhile, a federal grand jury indicted Forzano for possessing, receiving, and distributing pornography of minors. (State charges are still pending.) The offense carries a maximum 60-year prison term. As of press time, he had not yet entered a plea. But if convicted, Forzano won't be around children for a very long time to come.

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